Control of plant-wide systems using dynamic supply rates

This paper presents a framework for analysis of plant-wide processes from a network perspective. Using the concept of dissipativity, the conditions for plant-wide input–output stability and performance are developed, based on the dissipativity of individual subsystems and the topology of the network of the plant-wide process. Dynamic supply rates, expressed as quadratic differential forms, are proposed not only to render dissipativity based analysis less conservative but also allow the dynamic plant-wide performance criteria to be specified in terms of desired closed loop supply rates. The links between the plant-wide supply rate, finite L 2 gain in an extended input–output space and weighted H ∞ norm are explored in this paper. These results lay a foundation for a supply rate-centric approach to plant-wide distributed control.